The dating of castle masonry is always a hazardous business.
In the case of White Castle the surviving evidence appears quite clear
as to when major building work took place in the thirteenth
century. This is interesting in itself as it shows that the
round towers and gatehouse of the fortress are part of the early
twin-towered gatehouses that graced Britain in the first third of the
thirteenth century - the redating of the inner gatehouse at Pevensey
castle being a good case in point. To investigate
White
Castle throughly it has been necessary to look at all three castles of
the Trilateral and their history. Here the salient points are
re-iterated to show the most likely conclusion that the main masonry
works at White Castle date to the time period 1229 to 1231 and 1234 to
1239. For those who want to know the full references for the
facts and figures displayed here they need to refer to my works on all
three castles of the Trilateral.
The first thing to be done is to examine
the history of the site, also known as Llantilio castle, from 1219 to
the end of the century by which time most of the refurbishment of the
castle would have been completed. During the period 1219 to
1232 the castle was held by the justiciar, Hubert Burgh
(bef.1180-43). His important career has been much studied and
it is certain that from the time of King John (1199-1216) affairs of
state must have taken up much of his time. However the
demarcation between government and private business was not clear-cut
in this era. In August 1220 the government came to Skenfrith and there is
substantial circumstantial evidence that this castle was massively
rebuilt between then and 1224. Between 1224 and 1227 it was
the turn of Grosmont castle
to have major stone additions to its defences. By 1227 the
Constable's gate at Dover castle,
one of Hubert's major projects, was
complete and the building of the FitzWilliam Gate there was well under
way. Finally in the period 1229 to 1232 and 1234 to 1239 the
circumstantial evidence suggests that the defences of Llantilio and
Hadleigh castles were
overhauled as Hubert Burgh's final military
building projects.
During 1229 Hubert visited the
Trilateral, the king
authorising the expenditure of 1s 6d for the cost
of a messenger ‘going to the king's justice at
Skenfrith'. Although this suggests that Hubert was residing
at the most hospitable of his three Gwent castles, it is also possible
that Hubert was here to oversee the initiation of the refurbishment of
the defences of White Castle, which would appear to have started about
this time. A year after the possible commencement of the new
works at White Castle, on 20 November 1230, Hubert was granted
ceremonial permission to construct a castle at Hadleigh in
Essex. It would therefore be most surprising if Hubert was to
upgrade the defences of only three of his four main castles.
It is even more surprising to accept this when a contemporary chronicle
specifically states that Hubert spent a fortune on all four of these
castles and not just on three of them.
On 2 May 1230 William Braose of Brecon
and Abergavenny, whose
father Reginald had held the Trilateral between
1215 and 1219, was hanged by Prince Llywelyn. In July 1232,
the king, following malicious gossip, claimed that Hubert himself had
sent the prince information about William's intrigues. On
William's death Hubert had added the old Braose estates to his own
holdings and in the increased tension resulting from these acts the
constable of St Briavels castle
was mandated to let the constable of
Skenfrith have 300 quarrels on 27 May 1230. This may have
marked the completion of some building works at Llantilio as previous
orders for quarrels seem to have occurred at the completion of work at
Skenfrith and Grosmont castles. If Hubert had begun building
the new gatehouse and towers at White Castle in the spring of 1228, it
is possible that they were nearing completion in 1230.
On 29 July 1232, an exasperated King
Henry III ordered Earl Hubert to surrender all his castles to
the
Crown. Simultaneously Hubert was replaced as justiciar by
Stephen Segrave and a few days later the king demanded of him an
account of all his expenditures in this reign and the last and all the
money that 'had been wasted either in war or in any other way' and also
of the liberties by which Hubert enjoyed his lands. To this
Hubert replied that he held a warrant from King John which released him
from giving any account of any monies he had received or
used. The bishop of Winchester correctly replied that this
writ had ended with the life of John. Henry then charged
Hubert with various pieces of malicious gossip and Hubert was forced to
abjure the reins of state. Few it would appear were sorry to
see him go, until the colour of the new regime became increasingly
apparent.
On 19 September 1232 control of White
Castle and the Trilateral were added to the burgeoning possessions of
Peter Rivaux, the nephew of Bishop Peter les Roches of
Winchester. The next year, on 19 July 1233, the king further
granted Peter Rivaux, the treasurer of Poitiers, the manors of
Grosmont, Skenfrith and Llantilio (Lentilliok)
in Wales with their
castles for the service of two knights' fees. By this time
war had almost broken out in the Welsh borders between on the one part
the followers of Walter Clifford
and the new Earl Marshall and on the
other the government of Bishop Peter les Roches of
Winchester. As Henry III and his army marched into Wales at
Hay on Wye on 31 August, the
sheriff of Gloucester was ordered to
receive 10,000 quarrels from the constable of St Briavels and have them
taken to White Castle. Such an order is instructive as to
where the king thought so many quarrels might be necessary.
In time of peace only 2,000 quarrels were sent to Skenfrith in 1224 and
4,000 probably to Grosmont via Skenfrith in 1226. This
perhaps shows that White Castle was seen by contemporaries as the major
fortress of the three, the other sites being more
residential. This would suggest that White Castle was both
defensible and powerful at this time.
Five years after returning White Castle
and the Trilateral to Hubert Burgh, King Henry III again moved against
his old mentor. This resulted on 29 October 1239, in Earl
Hubert Burgh of Kent submitting himself to the king's liability and
grace and surrendering to him the three castles of White Castle
(Blancum castrum),
Grosmont, Skenfrith and the castle of Hadleigh
(Haetfeld)
with its town and park. In return for this the
king granted Hubert and Margaret his wife, for the duration of their
lives, all the other lands they held. One contemporary
chronicler commented that this was the greatest blow to Hubert as he
loved all four castles and had spent a fortune on rebuilding them,
though he bore this tribulation with his customary patience.

He resigned four castles into the king's
hand, namely White Castle and Grosmont in Wales and Skenfrith and
Hadleigh (Hauefeldiam).
In the rebuilding of these castles
Earl Hubert had spent a boundless sum of money.

This statement helps confirm that it was Hubert who was responsible for
building the bulk of White Castle, its round towers and outer ward, and
not the impecunious Lord Edward twenty years after him in his
relatively short and often interrupted tenure between 1254 and
1267. Otherwise why would Matthew Paris state that he had
rebuilt all four castles rather than just two or three? In
short is it best to accept an original highly informed source, or
accept a modern educated guess, which, as I hope to show, is
unsupported by an historical evidence.
On 14 October 1241, Walerand Teuton, the
royal keeper of Skenfrith, Grosmont and White Castle, was allowed
various expenses from the lands he held in bail. These
included 7s 9d on repairs carried out on the three bridges in the outer
bailey of White Castle; 5s 7½d for two brass pots and pans
for the king's kitchen of White Castle and finally £1 for ten
wooden crossbows bought and placed in the garrisons of the Three
Castles. These moneys were on top of the sixty marks
(£40) allowance Walerand had to maintain the
castles. Over two years later on 20 May 1244 the king allowed
Walerand, from the issues of the lands of the Trilateral, £15
10s spent in making a hall for the king at White Castle together with a
pantry and a buttery. This probably marks the construction of
the buildings along the internal face of the castle's west
curtain. These internal building works could well be taken to
mark the final completion of the castle after the building of the round
tower defences.
A few weeks after the
allowance Prince Dafydd rebelled once more and White Castle was again
placed on a war footing. By 1245 Prince Dafydd and his supporters had
generally been beaten back into North Wales. As the war
ground to a halt, on 6 September 1246, Walerand was allowed a further
£5 which he had spent on building a chamber anew within White
castle.
For the next few years White Castle
seems to have remained a quiet backwater. Then, on 20 June
1248, the king ordered the sending of eighty marks (£53 6s
8d) to Walerand Teuton, the keeper of Trilateral. A further
order on 23 November 1249 allocated Walerand a further £20
from the issues of the Trilateral bailiwick. The final
payment in this series occurred on 20 May 1251 when Walerand was
granted forty marks (£26 13s 4d), ‘his yearly
king's gift for his maintenance'. This seems to be the last
mention of White Castle under royal jurisdiction until 14 February 1254
when the king finally disposed of the castle as part of the
apportionment he made to his eldest son and heir, the Lord Edward.
The other lands passed over to Edward's
control in Wales included the whole county of Chester with its castles
and towns together with the king's conquest of Wales in these bounds,
to wit Rhuddlan, Dyserth (Dissard) and Degannwy (Gunnoc) and the other
land of the Perfeddwlad; Bristol, the Trilateral,
Montgomery,
Carmarthen, Cardigan and the castle of Buellt.
The same
summer, on 23 July, the constable of St
Briavels was ordered to send
6,000 quarrels to Gilbert Talbot, Edward's constable, to munition the
castles of Grosmont, Skenfrith and White Castle. Such an
action would seem to have been intended to let Edward have some of the
king's stock for his own usage in his now semi-independent
state. It hardly seems likely that this could have been
related to the completion of any defensive building works at the
castles as we have already seen how any major royal works would have
appeared in the pipe rolls as these lesser works at White Castle
already had. We are therefore left with the same question of
did the great rebuilding happen earlier under Hubert Burgh or later
under the Lord Edward?
It is to be presumed that the three
castles of the Trilateral were handed over to the young Lord Edward in
good condition. Certainly the order for the 6,000 quarrels to
be sent to Gilbert Talbot to munition them suggests that they were
defensible. However in 1256 their contemporary, Hadleigh
castle in Essex, was reported by its royal constable to be in
a very
bad state of repair. Its buildings were unroofed and its
walls broken. Presumably this had occurred because Hubert
Burgh had not been in residence since 1239 and without a lord the
castle, in totally pacified land, had been allowed to fall into decay,
even though it was no more than twenty years old.
The castles of the Trilateral in the
Welsh Marches seem to have been kept in good repair under the Lord
Edward. Indeed, just as the new Welsh war begins, we are
lucky to have the steward's account for the lordship of White Castle
for the year from 29 September 1256 to 29 September 1257.
This deals mainly with economics of the lordship, but it also contains
some expenditures which throws further light upon the status of the
castle. After accounting for various farming activities in
the lordship, Reeve Adam claimed moneys for iron bought to repair the
drawbridge at 3s 9d; three pairs of manacles for the prison and iron
bars for the window at two shillings; roofing the barn and other
buildings at 4s 5d; lead and tin for the tower (turris) at 3s 2d
and
for making a portcullis for the castle at a cost of £1
7s. Next there was a charge of one shilling for making an
‘outer gate' and a further shilling for the carriage of
timber from Monmouth. These minor expenditures brought the
total expenses at White Castle to £23 5s 4½d, to
this was added £30 0s 6½d which was handed over to
John Briton who at Christmas 1256 had been sent to Abergavenny to
organise the resistance to Llywelyn
ap Gruffydd in the
district. In total it was discovered that Reeve Adam had
spent 2s 7¼d more than he had received and that consequently
he personally was owed this amount. In all this suggests that
the lordship of White Castle was well-ordered and running at a useful
profit.
After Reeve Adam's account comes the
account of John Briton which ran from 8 September 1256 to 30 November
1257. This gives some idea of how the Lord Edward was
arranging his military affairs in the district. What is very
noticeable is that the garrison troops seem confined to Abergavenny and
to a much lesser degree Grosmont. From this we can see that
John's account contains many details which are not strictly relevant to
the history of White Castle, so only the salient points will be picked
out here. John accounted for £1 12s in his taking
seven hostages from the land of Buellt and taking them to White Castle
where they were no doubt incarcerated. It might be
interesting to know what became of them during the repeated attacks
upon Buellt until the castle's fall in July 1260. Also five
shillings were expended in carrying quarrels from St Briavels to White
Castle. In the presumed local White Castle garrison
£8 6s was spent on two men-at-arms with barded horses staying
there from 28 October 1256 [the outbreak of rebellion in Gwynedd] to 12
January 1257. To augment this force between Christmas Eve and
13 January 1257 Osbert Giffard was paid 27 shillings for remaining at
the castle. A further two buckets of quarrels were sent from
St Briavels to White Castle, which obviously indicates that defensive
preparations were in hand. An account was also rendered for
£2 spent on making 'a certain new bridge' at the
castle. These figures, with those for the tower roof and
drawbridge repairs, are altogether minuscule when considering that
Briton in this period spent £507 15s 2½d on
preparing his position at Abergavenny for war. The defences
of White Castle must have seemed satisfactory and an attack on the
castle seems to have been considered quite unlikely.
Altogether these figures supply us with
an interesting view of life in a medieval Marcher barony in the
mid-thirteenth century. It also strongly suggests that there
was no decay at White Castle as had been witnessed at Hubert Burgh's
other castle at Hadleigh.
Here in 1275 it was declared that
the castle houses were in ruins and the fortress itself was badly built
(castrum debiliter
aedificatum). The survey from White Castle
clearly shows that little rebuilding was going on and certainly that no
great refortification had occurred since 1254, otherwise these would
surely have shown up in this set of trifling repairs to the fortress.
We can see from these figures, and
especially the paltry sum spent on lead and tin for a tower roof, that
the castle was in a good state of fortification in the
mid-1250's. In 1302 merely repairing and amending one gutter
between the great hall and the prince's old chamber in Chester castle
cost £1 6s 3d in the payment of workmen, carpenters and
plumbers. This included the cost of working with the boards
and timber and soldering tin for the lead. We can therefore
see that the expense of just over three shillings in 1257 was merely
for repairing a small leak somewhere in one of the tower roofs, which
were then probably around twenty years old. The statement
should not be read as showing that the old Norman keep (K) was still
standing as has been suggested. Also in 1302 at Chester
castle the cost of totally rebuilding the chapel and roofing
it with
over five sheets of lead after a major fire cost £13
14s. Similarly the costs of setting seven great beams in
various rooms in Chester castle and strengthening the walls and setting
stone corbels within the structures cost £5 15s 2d.
In the late 1270's the building of Builth
castle in the Middle Marches
cost over £1,600. In the amount of masonry built
and towers and gatehouses constructed Builth would have been somewhat
smaller than White Castle. Such costs again show with a fair
degree of certainty that White Castle was not modernised by the Lord
Edward, but that it was constructed with some ‘of the
infinite amount of money' spent by Earl Hubert Burgh before 1239.
The year 1258 saw a bloodless revolution
in England and the curtailing of the power of the monarchy for a
time. One of the results of this was the limiting of the
power of the Lord Edward. Subsequently on 15 May 1260,
through the advice of the king's council, the Lord Edward transferred
the custodianship of Bristol to Philip Basset, Montgomery to John
Lestrange Junior, and the Trilateral
to Gilbert Talbot.
Indeed with the deteriorating relationship between father and son about
6 June 1262 the Lord Edward was persuaded to exchange his hold on many
of his lands. These included Grosmont, Skenfrith and White
Castle. In return he was to receive the king's Jewry of
England with all the issues, profits, debts and customs for the next
three years. In other words Edward was only in charge of
White Castle from 1254 to 1262 and for six of these eight years Edward
was totally cash-strapped fighting a losing war in Wales. It
is therefore quite ludicrous to suggest that his energies were spent in
refortifying an isolated castle in South Wales while it was his North
Welsh possessions that were being attacked and overrun.
Further it is impossible that the castle was rebuilt in the period 1254
to 1256 as we partially have the account of the lordship which show
incontrovertibly that no major rebuilding was going on.
On 18 July 1262 Gilbert Talbot, in his
capacity as constable of the Trilateral, was ordered to help defend
South Wales for King Henry III. That same winter of 1262
disaster overwhelmed the Marches of Wales. Roger Mortimer and
his allies were defeated at Cefnllys
in late November and towards the
end of December were forced to retreat headlong out of Wales, while the
lordship of Brecon was
overrun. As a consequence of this the
government of England ordered Gilbert Talbot to make good the munitions
of the castles of Skenfrith, Grosmont and White Castle 'by all means
lest disaster occurs' on 24 December. Gilbert seems to have
succeeded in his task and the defeat by the Marchers of 10,000 Welshmen
at the battle of Abergavenny
on 3 March 1263 brought the Welsh threat
to the district around White Castle to an end. During this
period the Lord Edward was seeking loans in the towns of Shrewsbury,
Ludlow and Hereford 'for certain urgent business of the king's in the
Marches'. However we may presume that this had much more to
do with the relief of Degannwy and Dyserth castles, than for the
unnecessary refortification of the Trilateral. In May 1264
Edward was taken prisoner at Lewes and as has been seen there can be
little doubt that no major building work had been undertaken by him at
White Castle during his years of lordship. Indeed no more is
mentioned of the Trilateral during the rest of the disturbances which
climaxed with the defeat and death of Earl Simon Montfort at the battle
of Evesham on 4 August 1265 and ended with pacification after
the
dictum of Kenilworth at the end of 1266.
It therefore remains to be seen whether
White Castle was rebuilt under the rule of Edward's brother, Edmund
Crouchback. On 28 December 1266 Edmund was granted Builth
castle and its appurtenances, which had previously been part
of the
patrimony of his brother the Lord Edward until it was seized by Prince
Llywelyn in 1260. To retake this fortress Prince Edmund would
obviously need a base and what was more natural than to give him the
reasonably nearby and conveniently vacant old lordship of his elder
brother at Grosmont? This of course included White
Castle. Consequently on 30 June 1267, just three months
before the treaty of Montgomery was signed with Prince Llywelyn ap
Gruffydd, the Lord Edward restored the honour of Monmouth and the
castles of Grosmont, Skenfrith, and White Castle to the king so that he
could in turn give them to Prince Edmund and his heirs.
Prince Edmund seems to have made Grosmont his caput at an early
date. Consequently he may not have spent much time or effort
on the great military fortress of White Castle, although it is apparent
that Grosmont was remodelled around this time. Prince Edmund
accompanied his brother on crusade, being out of the kingdom from soon
after 13 February 1271 to early in 1274. At this time an
extent was made which described the state of White Castle's
contemporary, Hadleigh castle
in Essex. This was found to
have been badly built and its houses were consequently much
ruined. The state of the poor workmanship may have been
overstated, for no repairs were carried out until the end of the 1280's
and then only some £41 was needed to patch the fortress
up. The castle then paid host to the king on two occasions in
1293 and 1305. This hardly made it a royal
favourite. Despite this the castle was much used by King
Edward II and surveys of the time mention two towers, a main gate and
barbican and a postern. Hadleigh was later
massively rebuilt between 1360 and 1370 with two great round towers
being added to the older castle which appears to have had rectangular
towers like those found at Dover
castle. In total over
£2,000 was spent on the works. The large round
tower by the gate and two square towers may have been part of the
original design of Hubert Burgh.
After returned from crusade Prince
Edmund, on 6 June 1275, claimed that he had only received
£600 of the 2,600 marks (£1,733 6s 8d) granted to
him by the king for his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
Consequently the king ordered the Exchequer to inspect the relevant
rolls and pay any balance due. Such large amounts of money
might always be used to start the refurbishment of what Edmund was
making into his family home at Grosmont. There seems little
evidence that any of it was spent at White Castle, which it has been
argued above was the most recently refurbished of his three local
castles (1229-32, 1234-39).

The Masonry Defences
The bulk of the masonry at White Castle belongs to five distinctly
traceable phases. The earliest is the keep (K), of which just
under half of its foundations remain. Flanking and
surrounding this are the remains of the curtain walls probably
constructed under the aegis of Ralph Grosmont in the two building years
of 1185 and 1186. Next came the addition of four great drum
towers with the gatehouse in the northern half of the inner ward
probably in the period 1229 to 1231. Around the same time the
keep (K) was demolished and a new curtain wall with postern (P) built
over its site. Its style seems different from the rest of the
masonry and this may have been the final major work at the
fortifications. Despite this it seems likely that the
construction of the two southernmost towers and the outer ward occurred
last, probably between 1234 and 1239. These later three
phases, the bulk of the present remains at White Castle, has generally
been stated to be the work of the Lord Edward, or his brother, Edmund
Plantagenet, when they were lords of the Trilateral between 1254 and
1296. However there is no documentary evidence to back up
this claim. Conversely there is evidence, as has been seen
above, to place the work within the ambit of the ‘boundless
sum of money' Earl Hubert Burgh had spent at the Trilateral before
1239. The similarities between work at Dover castle and the
Trilateral really clinches the case on the grounds of probability.

The Gatehouse (G)
It would seem that some 28 years passed after White Castle first came
into the hands of Hubert Burgh in 1201 before he began his
refortification of the site in the period 1229 to 1232. Since
the 1950's it has become acceptable to date the additions to the inner
ward to the period after 1254, though there are problems with this
which seem not to have been adequately considered.
Contemporary evidence shows that an outer gatehouse was standing in
1257 when it needed a new gate. Unless the castle had been
recently attacked, or the workmanship was defective, of which our
record shows no evidence, this would suggest that the building was of
some antiquity. Further the towers of both the inner and
outer wards show every indication of being more in line with the
smaller towers built by Hubert Burgh at Skenfrith and Grosmont, than
those of the larger ones of the later era of the Lord Edward at
Caerphilly, Rhuddlan or Flint. Similarly the work of Hubert
Burgh at Dover can be seen
to be similar to that at White Castle in
more than a simple, superficial manner. Therefore it can be
reasonably accepted that Hubert was responsible for the refortification
of White Castle, and that this was carried out after he had finished
rebuilding the other two castles of the Trilateral as the historical
evidence recounted above suggests.
White Castle gatehouse is remarkably
similarly to the one at Whittington
castle which was built in the early
1220's. The gate passageway to White Castle is heavily
fortified. First came a portcullis of unusual
design. Most portcullis are built into the gatehouse, but at
White Castle it seems to have been added to the design as an
afterthought. This is strange for one appears to have existed
at the earlier Grosmont castle, unless of course this is a later
insertion. An internal portcullis also existed within the
vaulted gatechamber of the Constable gatehouse at Dover
castle. At White Castle a row of projecting quoins
were added
in front of the outer gate arch. Normally these would have
been within the first section of wall. Further, if partially
external, it would have been expected for the quoins to form an arch
above the gateway so that the portcullis would have been hidden from
view when raised. At White Castle the quoins continued
apparently to battlement level. Here there must have been a
projecting chamber from where the portcullis could have been
operated. This is a singular and unusual design in Wales and
the Marches.

The gatehouse at White Castle
is a
unique structure and contains several features which suggest that it is
an early twin D-shaped entrance. At Dover
castle the north
gate looks quite similar to White Castle in many respects, although the
Dover castle gatehouse was heavily rebuilt after its destruction by the
rebels and French in 1216. Like White Castle it has an
impressive batter spreading a considerable distance down the
scarp. Unlike the Gwentian castle though, it has two or three
long, unsighted loops, without oillets, in both its remaining lower
floors. It also has an external offset at floor
level. This is quite similar to the round towers at Chepstow
castle
which are now accepted as late-twelfth century. The
FitzWilliam gate at Dover, which replaced the north gate around 1227,
also bears some comparison with White Castle gatehouse. Both
are rectangular structures with twin protruding towers set on sloping
plinths. However the FitzWilliam gate led to a covered
postern which passed through the ditch and the next bank of the castle
defences to an outer gate which is now mostly destroyed.
Internally the gatehouse had two windows on first floor level
overlooking the bailey. On the floor above at Dover were a
set of twin loops in each tower, with a further loop set above the gate
archway between them. Both gates should also be compared with
Criccieth castle gatehouse. This gatehouse, which probably
dates to before 1239, has three loops on its ground floor and none on
the floor above. These two early thirteenth century
structures again suggest that the gatehouse at White Castle dates to
the period 1229 to 1232 and this enhances the historical evidence found
for this era, which has been divined from the study of both Skenfrith
and
Grosmont castles and the history of the Trilateral.
At White Castle the upper floors of both
gatehouse towers and the east (E) and west (W) towers are externally
blind. Presumably this was the received wisdom after the
building of the towers at first Skenfrith and then Grosmont.
This tower (M) should also be compared with the twin towered
Fitzwilliam gate built under Hubert Burgh's constableship and the
older, but much rebuilt north gate, both at Dover. As
mentioned above, many of the rectangular Angevin towers of King Henry
II at Dover, built in the period 1179 to 1189, appear to be of a
similar design. These much altered towers of the inner ward
seem to have three ground floor embrasures and no openings in the upper
storeys. Again these features taken together at White Castle
seem to point to this structure dating to the work of Hubert Burgh in
the 1230's.
The suggestion that the portcullis and
drawbridge apartment, like the hoardings around the walls, were wooden
offers interesting possibilities. What is immediately
apparent is the sheer height and inaccessibility of the machinery set
on top of the gatehouse (G). There could have been no
comfortable constable's chamber set here to vet those entering the
inner ward of White Castle. The mechanism set in a probably
wooden hoarding would also have been incredibly vulnerable to artillery
fire. We are therefore left with an early twin-towered
gatehouse which is very lacking in respect to later Edwardian examples
such as St Briavels,
Goodrich, Rhuddlan, Caernarvon or
Harlech. Indeed
the gatehouse is virtually devoid of external
features except for four crossbow loops in each tower, the battlements
and hoardings. As such this again suggests that the
refurbishment of White Castle dates to the first half of the thirteenth
century rather than to the second half as has been previously accepted.

The Inner Ward
The two flanking towers of the inner
ward have similarities to the two gatehouse towers although both lack
stairways. The exterior of the west tower (W) is perhaps the
most photographed part of the castle, giving fine reflections as it
does in the moat below. It currently consists of three
storeys, though there may be a deep circular basement as has been found
in the east tower (E) and at several of the towers at Skenfrith and
Grosmont castles. The ground floor of the west tower (W) is
currently entered through a broken doorway cut into the earlier curtain
wall at current ground level. Of this structure
only a few of the lower jambs now remain and these have the Hubert
Burgh style doorstops that are found so often at the castles of the
Trilateral.
The first floor of the west tower (W)
was unlit and it seems possible that there was no entrance into it,
except possibly from the floor above. The next floor of the
tower was accessed from north and south via the wallwalk, though there
were no loops or any other feature at this level. It is very
noticeable that by the second stage the tower has assumed a D-shaped
appearance, rather than the round structure of the floors
below. Again there are no lights in the three surviving sides
of this tower. To the east the straight side of the D-shaped
chamber appears to have been either open or wooden backed.
Certainly the surviving sides of the opposite east tower (E) is in
finished masonry. The final level of the tower was a fighting
platform reached from the wallwalk level via a dozen or so straight
steps up from the wallwalk to the south. This is a similar
layout to that found at Skenfrith.
Opposite the west tower (W) is the east
tower. The only real difference between the two buildings is
that the east tower had a deep Skenfrith and Grosmont style
basement. Like these comparable towers the ten feet deep
basement of the east tower (E) also has no obvious access
point. The first floor was entered some three feet above
current ground level by a now mostly destroyed slightly pointed doorway
inserted in the older curtain. Again the similarities with
Skenfrith, Grosmont and the rear of the gatetowers at White Castle are
to be noted.
In all, these four round towers seem the
larger twins of those found at the neighbouring castles of Skenfrith
and Grosmont. It therefore seems unnatural to ascribe them to
different eras of ownership and construction as has recently been done.

The Southernmost Towers
The southern (S) and south-eastern (C) towers are similar to
one
another and seem to belong to a slightly later phase than the other two
pairs of towers just described to the north. These towers
differ from the others by being D-shaped in their entirety rather than
boldly projecting circular towers with D-shaped upper floors.
They are also slightly larger than the other four towers being some 32
feet in external diameter with walls seven feet thick above the
batter. The D-shaped chambers within the tower have a
diameter of eighteen feet. Like the east and west towers
(E&W) they form a butt joint with the curtain, but in this case
the craftsmanship seems less certain and there has been a certain
amount of slippage.
The history related above suggests with
some exactitude that they were constructed by Earl Hubert Burgh,
probably early in the period 1234 to 1239 and before the building of
the outer ward (O). This is suggested because their loops do
not end in top and bottom ball oillets like those of the outer
defences. These towers also differ from the east and west
towers in having loops on two, or, in the case of the chapel tower (C),
three floors. That the towers are of a similar age to the
rest is suggested by their loops and battlements which seem similar to
all the rest that survive. The towers are also dissimilar to
the Lancaster modifications at Grosmont which were probably built
within twenty years either side of 1300. However, the
approach (J) to the upper storeys of the south tower (S) at White
Castle bares some similarity to that to the approach to the great tower
at Grosmont.
There seems little doubt that the
battlements followed a similar arrangement on all six of the inner ward
towers. This probably indicates the towers were built
reasonably contemporaneously, or that all the wallwalks and battlements
were refurbished near-simultaneously at a later date. It
should also be noted that the lower layout of three loops in the
basement and two loops against the curtain in the floor above mirrors
the west tower of Hubert Burgh at Grosmont castle. This
arrangement has many similarities with the corner towers at Skenfrith
castle. There are no towers of a similar nature to the south
(S) or chapel (C) towers at Dover
castle and those at Hadleigh
have
been to heavily damaged to make useful comparisons.

The Postern Gate (P) and South-Eastern Curtain Wall
East of the south tower (S) is an external round-headed segmental
relieving arch. Under this was the apparently round-headed
postern (P) of which the jambs have now totally disappeared, though two
drawbar slots remain. Internally is a short four foot gate
passageway and behind this is another robbed-out gateway, topped by a
segmental relieving arch. It is possible that this gateway
was the original entrance to the castle, now encased by the later
wall. Superficially there are similarities between this gate
and the smaller water gate at Skenfrith which may date to
1187. Internally at White Castle, immediately west of the
site of the postern gate (P), is the thinning of the curtain marked by
the remains of a fine quoined joint. This matches similar
features on the east side of the gatehouse (G) passageway and
externally by the north-east tower of the twelfth century inner
enceinte at Dover castle. The purpose of these features are
uncertain, but they would appear to be decorative. It
certainly makes a symmetrical match with the gatehouse (G) quoining and
having two such features built in such a manner seems
deliberate. Similarly the example at Dover seems to have
little military logic about its construction.

The Outer Gatehouse (g)
To the north of the inner ward lies the irregular outer ward.
This too has been dated to the Edwardian era with little reference to
the castle's history as described above. The castle is
currently entered through the outer gatehouse (g). The east
and west walls of the gatehouse (g) have mostly gone leaving only the
north and south walls as two jagged fragments. Within this
stood the gate passageway. The west exit into the ward (O)
once had an archway in which was a gate. This was probably
similar to the layout at Montgomery
castle inner gatehouse which was
built in the 1220's. Only the lower stops of the White Castle
gateway remain. At the eastern, turret end of the possibly
earlier rectangular gatetower, was a further gate of which the door
stops also remain. None of these door stops would look out of
place at Skenfrith or Grosmont. As at Grosmont castle, the
early drawbridge pit seems to have been later encased by two projecting
walls added to the front of the older gatetower. At Grosmont,
however, the facing of the projections were square, while those at
White Castle have rounded faces. These solid turrets show
some similarities to the twin-towered gatehouses at Montgomery and
Longtown castles.
It has been suggested that White Castle
outer gatehouse (g) was only constructed in the mid-1250's when,

money was spent on making a portcullis,
an ‘outer' gate and a ‘new bridge'.

However the shilling spent on a gate was surely for a wooden
replacement of an earlier castle gate rather than the building of this
expensive masonry structure which at this time would have easily cost
between £300 and £500. All this actually
proves is that a new portcullis, outer gate and a bridge were made
somewhere at the castle. Indeed the large sum of £2
paid for the bridge might well suggest that it was partially the stone
bridge abutment to the outer gate (g) that was constructed
now. If it were, it would again suggest nothing, except that
the outer gatehouse (g) was standing in 1256 and needed a new gate and
portcullis. Indeed the money spent on repairing the
drawbridge could well also relate to the outer gatehouse and suggest
that the two rounded turrets had been recently added to the older
gatetower and that this consequently required the addition of a new
portcullis and gate.

The North Curtain Wall of
the Outer Ward
At the end of the mostly collapsed east curtain wall was a backless
circular mural tower (a) of two storeys. This is about twenty
feet in external diameter. The tower is joined to the curtain
on the west side by a short section of wall which is obviously part of
the original plan. Probably it indicates that the architects
did not plan the wall and tower properly with the result that there was
a gap of several feet between them which had to be filled with this
little section of wall. Externally a sloping plinth is still
evident around the tower. Such plinths are lacking on the
outer ward curtain wall. Apparently this is because the walls
stand on top of the bank of the outer ditch (d), while the towers
protrude down the slope into the ditch. On the ground level
of the corner tower is yet another 'blind' room. Above is a
room with three crossbow loops. This is the standard layout
in the outer ward towers, a reversal of what is seen in the inner ward
both at White Castle and Dover castle, but similar to the Skenfrith
towers. There appears to be no doorway into the ground floor,
or the floor above. There is merely an aperture, which may
once have been blocked with a wooden wall similar to that of a
‘black and white house'.
On the first floor are three staggered
cross loops set in wide embrasures. These have angular roofs
and are quite shallow, due to the thinness of the walls.
Externally the embrasures supported three similar split sighted
crossbow loops with ball top and bottom oillets. This layout,
apart from the open back, is reminiscent of the towers at Skenfrith
castle. Indeed the embrasures with their pointed segmental
arches, three to a floor above a basement, are pure
Skenfrith. It is uncertain how access was gained to the upper
floor. Possibly it was via wooden steps to the rear, or even
a wooden stair down from the wallwalk at second floor level.
It is interesting that the ground floor would have been left literally
undefended by crossbow fire. This is the opposite to the
inner ward at White Castle.
Two-thirds of the way along the north
curtain stands a half round tower (b), otherwise similar in design to
its corner companion to the east (a). This is the most ruined
of the towers of the outer ward. The bulk of its first floor
loops have been stripped from their embrasures and looking into this
tower you could be forgiven for mistaking it for one of those at
Skenfrith. Within the tower the ball base oillets of the
north and west loops are still in situ showing that the tower
originally had similar loops to the others. The rear wall of
this tower has been gouged out at ground level and the basement walls
robbed of their facing. The upper floor, however, is
externally perfect at the rear and this shows that the tower was either
open to the air or wooden backed. Although the top of the
tower is now gone, it presumably had a fighting platform similar to the
other towers at the castle.
From the north tower (b) the curtain
makes three irregular sweeps, leaving a vulnerable unflanked angle,
round to the largest tower in the outer enceinte (c). The
unflanked angle is not buttressed with quoins, unlike the south-east
wall of the inner ward. Presumably this suggests that the
south-east curtain post-dates the outer ward (O). There is a
similar unflanked angle as this at Wigmore
castle which was probably
built in the early to mid-thirteenth century. There are no
features in the rest of the outer ward curtain that differ
significantly from the rest of the structure in style or date.

Costings, Comparisons and
Conclusions
It is worthwhile here reciting a few figures concerning castle building
during the reign of King Henry III (1216-72) to strengthen the opinion
that Hubert Burgh built the White Castle we know today.
Firstly the king is recorded as spending about £85,000 on
castle works, an annual expenditure of some £1,500.
Henry's largest expenses in Wales were Montgomery
castle at some
£2,000 between 1222 and 1226 and Dyserth and Degannwy, which
could not have cost less than £7,500 between them.
Other than the minuscule amounts recorded in the history of the castle
above, no serious royal building works are recorded as being undertaken
at White Castle for the Crown. As will be seen below, the
building of the six towers and outer ward would probably have cost some
£2,600 in the mid-thirteenth century; we can therefore
presume that it was the immensely rich Earl Hubert Burgh of Kent who
was responsible for the refortification of White Castle, and not the
impecunious Lord Edward. The style of the castle probably
rules out its later rebuilding by Edward's far richer brother, Prince
Edmund Plantagenet (1245-96) when he held the castle after 1267.
To give an idea of the cost of building
something like the later portions of White Castle we will examine some
of the building works of King Edward I (1272-1307) during his conquest
of Wales. In May 1277 at Builth
Wells castle it cost
£5 to assemble and roof a set of timber buildings which were
to serve as chapel, hall, chamber, kitchen and smithy to the new
castle. By mid-November all these buildings had been
dismantled (avulse)
and replaced by a new great hall, kitchen,
brewhouse and stable. Also in May nineteen carpenters were
sent to Builth from Abergavenny ‘to build a certain tower
there'. They were assisted by 28 men with picks and shovels
and by November had built enough to require this structure, the
brattishing, and two rooms to be covered in straw as a protection
against the frost. By 13 January 1278 over £218 had
been spent on the wages of masons and quarrymen and over £85
on carpenters. From November to May only some twelve
shillings was spent on digging and bringing stone from the quarries to
the castle. Then, from 18 April, costs increased, rising from
nearly £4 to £7 3s 10d in May, where it remained
until mid-September, before dropping again during the winter
doldrums. At the end of April 1278 expenses began to rise
again and throughout the year lead was shipped in from Shelve in
Shropshire and cast
and laid by a master plumber. This must
surely indicate the roofing of finished buildings.
Interestingly the sum of £16 6s 8d was expended in making a
great palisade, 49 perches (808½ feet) long, round the outer
bailey. The distance quoted would suggest that this wall was
not to surround just the outer bailey, which has a circumference of
only 500 feet, but the entire castle, the outer earthwork surrounding
it being some 1,000 feet long. Alternatively the
circumference of the inner ward is about 800 feet. Probably
only excavation could elucidate on this point.
At Builth it was intended to remove the
49 perch long palisade and in April 1280 the constable of the castle
was ordered to send the best of the brattishing from it to Roger
Mortimer as the king's gift. However by October 1280 the
masonry wall to replace it had only just been begun across the ditch to
the outer ward. The rest of the apparently completed castle
consisted of a great tower, a stone wall with six turrets (turriculis)
surrounding the castle, a turning bridge with two great towers (magnis
turrellis), a stone wall near this bridge and enclosing
the inner
bailey and a ditch around the bailey, which was partially filled at one
point by the paltry attempt to enclose the outer bailey. Work
continued at a diminishing tempo until September 1282, but was never
completed. The surviving accounts suggest that about forty
masons and around 130 workmen, of whom some 35 were women at 6d instead
of 7d a day, made up the workforce during the summer. In
total £1,666 9s 5¼d had been spent over the five
years. In 1343 it was found that a further £200
would have been necessary to complete the great gatehouse which had
been left unfinished in 1282.
At White Castle the outer bailey (O) has
a circumference of roughly 850 feet, so it is a great pity that the
Builth wall was never completed or costed as this would have been a
good comparison. The circumference of the twelfth century
inner ward (B) wall is about 500 feet and cost at least £131
2s 8d between 1185 and 1186. Interestingly, at Aberystwyth
castle in 1286, making fifty perches (825 feet) of what was
apparently
half the outer castle wall to the north cost only £37 10s
10d. This seems a very low sum and probably relates to the
‘third bailey' which had been largely destroyed by the sea by
1343 and of which no trace is currently visible.
At Conway castle we still have the
payments made for the construction of the south wall of the
town. Five D-shaped, open backed turrets, each about 28 feet
high, were charged at sixteen shillings per foot built.
Further costs were £12 10s for battlementing the towers and
£1 5s 10d for rendering the battlements. This
suggests that the rest of the walls remained exposed and
un-limed. The roughly 1,000 feet of curtain walling between
the towers, sixteen feet four inches high, cost
£117. Finally the twin D-towered Mill gatehouse,
which was far more advanced than the outer gatehouse (g) at White
Castle, cost £118 7s for building the structure without
fireplaces or windows. Adding three fireplaces and six
windows cost a further £10, thirty feet of chimney work cost
£4 10s, the dressings for the great gate archway £1
5s and two lintels for the two doors of the flanking towers eleven
shillings. Later some wooden gates at Conway cost
£15 10s. This cost is far greater than the
obviously paltry ‘outer gate' at White Castle in
1257. Add to the Mill Gate the cost of the materials and
labour and the flooring and roofing and we are probably looking at no
less than £300 for building this gatehouse. It is
to be presumed that the final cost of the adjoining curtains and towers
was similar to that of the gatehouse. If White Castle outer
ward (O) was constructed in the 1250's or 1260's we could therefore
expect it to have cost somewhere around the £600
mark. It is doubtful that the expenditure would have been
much less in the 1230's. Certainly walling only half the
outer bailey and adding a twin towered gatehouse at Degannwy between
1250 and 1253 seems to have cost about £1,500, even though
when ordered the cost was expected to be only 300 marks
(£200) for double the work.
Similarly to get an impression of the
cost of the inner ward towers at White Castle we need look no further
than Harlech castle.
There particulars have survived that
clearly show the cost of similar towers built in 1289. The
north-west tower at Harlech was built 49½ feet high at
£2 5s per foot at a total cost of £111 7s
6d. The south-west tower, 52 feet high, at a similar price
per foot cost £117. The simple north gate
at the foot of the sea cliff cost £63 5s at £2 15s
per foot, with an unfortunately illegible surcharge for an extra
possibly fourteen feet built on top of the gate. The small
south tower in the outer ward was charged at 12s 2d per foot and
therefore cost £6 1s 8d for the ten feet of its
height. Building the battlements on 130 feet of wall with a
look-out garret on it and seven voussoirs for loops cost
£25. Interestingly a further fifty feet of
battlements alone cost £15. Another interesting
expenditure was the £45 16s 8d it cost for lead and plumbing
it on to the roofs of the gatehouse and two further towers.
Similarly in 1244 it cost £68 1s 4½d to lead the
roof of the keep at Lancaster. Ten years later ‘a
curtain wall and gateway' at the same castle cost £257 7s
7½d. These costs do not seem greatly different
from that incurred in 1218 when a tower fell down at Kenilworth
castle. Its rebuilding subsequently cost
£150. Obviously this sum did not include materials
as they were already on site, mainly supplied by the collapsed tower.
At White Castle this would give a
probable cost for building the four southern towers of some
£400. The gatehouse would probably have been about
£300 on its own and then there would have been some
£70 to roof them all. In 1292-93 the similar sized
twin-towered gatehouse at St
Briavels castle cost nearly
£500. Of this £415 8s 9½d had
been spent ‘on the construction of the new gateway into the
castle by the king's writ', while an additional £62 11s
¾d had been spent on the purchase of lead for its
roof. When woodwork for the floors and other materials are
taken into consideration at White Castle we are probably looking at a
round figure of about £1,000 for the inner ward
refurbishment, when we add labour and all the extra costs that always
occur this probably brings the total to more like
£2,000. This is a similar sum to that spent by King
John (1199-1216) in making the curtain wall complete with D-shaped
towers at Scarborough castle. In total therefore, it would
seem reasonable to suggest that the refurbishment of White Castle cost
some £2,600 - a sum most likely found by Earl Hubert Burgh,
for neither the Lord Edward, nor his younger brother, Prince Edmund,
were either recorded as building anything in the Gwent
Marches. Nor does it seem likely from their histories that
their finances were sufficient to undertake such great rebuildings at
White Castle when they had the opportunity.
One feature that ties the Trilateral
castles together, and therefore suggests that they were constructed as
part of a single building scheme, is the access to the
wallwalks. This would appear to have been gained mainly via
the two individualistic stairways in the gatetower, although there were
likely stairs in the chapel tower (C) at White Castle and in the west
tower at Grosmont. The profusion of wooden steps to wallwalk
level which are occasionally suggested would simply seem to be
imaginary, especially when the number of buildings clustering against
the curtain walls are taken into consideration. At Skenfrith
there is no obvious method of reaching the wallwalk, though it must be
suspected from the rest of the remains, that the original stairway was
in the gatehouse. At Grosmont a straight stair can still be
made out in the gatehouse, although a short stairway in the west tower
appears to allow access to the mid-floor of the west tower, if not the
wallwalk.
Finally, at all three castles of the
Trilateral, the lack of sanitation is immediately obvious. At
White Castle garderobes only certainly exist in the outer ward and
these were obviously built with a fair amount of people in mind, with
two or three in the outer gatehouse (g), two in the west tower (c) and
one against the curtain (f). The pit (V) in the inner ward is
of uncertain purpose. The latrine block by the side of the
great tower at Grosmont may also be an addition to Hubert Burgh's work,
while at Skenfrith the only garderobe, a corbelled out latrine, is set
in the second floor of the king's tower. Perhaps Hubert had
taken to heart the lesson of the loss of Chateau Gaillard by a common
soldier scaling the undefended latrine shaft. Certainly his
provisions for sanitation and light for the common soldier seems
singularly lacking at all three inner fortresses.
This study has revealed much new data
about the history, building and operation of White Castle. It
is also interesting to see how the perceived history of the site has
see-sawed over the years. The great G.T. Clarke believed that
the inner curtain was built during the late 1180's and that Hubert
Burgh was responsible for the rest of the masonry. In 1961
this view was overturned and the dating of the later masonry was
adjusted to the 1250's or 1260's. As I hope to have shown,
this reinterpretation was based upon slim evidence that does not stand
up to detailed scrutiny. Certainly the singular reference to
roof repairs of ‘a tower' in 1257 cannot be taken as evidence
that the old keep (K) was still standing, nor can the inexpensive works
possibly carried out on an outer gate be tied to the refortification of
the outer ward (O).
What can be firmly deduced is that the
rectangular keep (K) could have been built at any time between 1067 and
1160, though perhaps the first push into Gwent by the earls of Hereford
in the late 1060's and early 1070's or the Anarchy of Stephen's reign
would have provided most motivation. It also seems likely
that this keep (K) was built simultaneously with the hall block of
Grosmont castle, Grosmont being the caput and White Castle the major
fortress of the honour. With this in mind it should also be
noted that the only early Norman pottery to come from all three castle
sites is from Skenfrith where a single sherd came from a silted ditch
which was said to have lain under the Hubert Burgh masonry
castle. It is therefore eminently possibly that the later
castles of the Trilateral began as the castles of the Bilateral, and
that Newcastle/Skenfrith was a latecomer to the scheme.
Secondly the northern four towers of the
inner ward at White Castle can be reasonably assigned to the work of
Hubert Burgh, probably in the era 1229 to 1231, and that the two
southern towers and also much of the outer ward probably date to his
work in the period 1234 to 1239. The work carried out to 'the
tower' of Walerand Teuton and his immediate successors in the
mid-thirteenth century was far more likely concerned with the
adjustments to the larger south tower (S) than to the obsolete keep (K)
which had most likely already been demolished by Hubert Burgh when the
two great southern flanking towers and joining curtain were
constructed. Certainly parts of the old keep (K) appear to be
reused in the chapel tower (C). It can therefore be seen that
the dating of the construction of White Castle is reasonably secure and
supported by the works of Hubert Burgh at other fortresses.
In total it can be seen that White
Castle as it now stands is primarily an early to mid-thirteenth century
enclosure castle built on the site of an earlier keep and bailey
structure. Its great size shows the determination of the
Crown and later Earl Hubert Burgh of Kent in denying this district to
the native Welsh. As such it stands as a masterpiece of
military engineering to the second quarter of the thirteenth century,
just as the Edwardian castles of North Wales stand testament to the
abilities of the last quarter of the century.